THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
Workshops
Graduates from the Department of History PhD program pursue careers in the academy, government, nonprofits, and the private sector. To facilitate the search process, the Department annually offers workshops for its PhD students. For Autumn 2023, the schedule is as follows:
International Postdocs and Fellowships
October 18
12:30-1:20
John Hope Franklin Room, SSRB 224
Speakers: Thuto Thipe, Jacob Eyferth, Tara Zahra, Adrian Johns
Faculty Coordinator: Emily Kern
In this panel, speakers will discuss pursuing academic jobs and fellowships outside the United States and what it’s like to change academic systems at different points in your career.
Preparing a Teaching Demonstration
Department of History with the Chicago Center for Teaching and Learning
November 1
12:30-1:20
John Hope Franklin Room, SSRB 224
Teaching demonstrations are an increasingly common feature of the campus visit for academic jobs, especially at undergraduate-focused or teaching-intensive colleges and universities. In this workshop, pedagogy experts from the Chicago Center for Teaching and Learning will talk about what the teaching demo is supposed to do, how to put together an effective presentation, and how to pick your material or tailor your lesson plan to different kinds of institutions.
Please RSVP here by October 29.
Resources
The Chicago Center for Teaching provides a certificate in teaching, teaching consultations, training in course design and college teaching, and an advanced fellows program.
UChicagoGRAD provides advising, internships, and job fairs for all Chicago graduate students and alumni. PATHS (Professional Advancement and Training for Humanities Scholars) provides additional resources for History students at all stages of their academic careers. Upcoming UChicagoGRAD events that might be of interest include:
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10 October @ 12.30pm: Tailoring Your Academic Job Applications
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11 October @ 12.00pm: Interview Preparation and Resource
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25 October @ 4.00pm: Job Searching
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Here is the full calendar of career development events (including locations, further details, and the RSVP link).
UChicagoGRAD
UChicago GRAD offers a large range of workshops and events covering topics like tailoring your job applications, practicing for interviews, or how to effectively communicate your research to wider audiences. These events can be a great way to get a wider range of expertise and perspective on your job materials and possible career opportunities after the PhD, as well as a great way to connect with other people in different fields who are going through similar application processes. Note: you do need to make a UChicago GRAD account to register and see details for events.
Academic Job Market: Immigration Options Beyond OPT, STEM OPT and Academic Training
Tuesday, October 24; 12:30-1:30; UChicagoGRAD HQ (Bookstore Building, 3rd floor)
UChicago's Office of International affairs will present on Immigration Options Beyond OPT, STEM OPT and Academic Training focused on the academic job market. This presentation is suitable for international PhD students and postdocs seeking research (and teaching)
PATHS Workshop: Breaking into Literary Translation as a Profession
Tuesday, October 31, 9:30-11:00; UChicagoGRAD HQ (Bookstore Building, 3rd floor)
PhD students in the humanities and humanistic social sciences are well-equipped with the skills to begin translating. In this PATHS workshop, Daniel Hahn-a luminary of the translation field with a hundred published books to his name-will talk to PhD students about how they can become translators and what their early-career training should optimally look like.
The full calendar of career development events (including locations, further details, and the RSVP link) can be found here:
The University of Chicago created the graduate workshops in 1982 to encourage intellectual exchange among students and faculty in the humanities, social sciences, and divinity studies. Widely replicated at other universities, UChicago workshops sponsor talks by PhD candidates, local scholars, and those from the extended global community. Debate and critical inquiry in workshops are a vital part of our students' education and scholarly agenda. They foster a sense of community and provide graduate students a forum for sharing their dissertation research and establishing valuable networks with students and scholars whose research interests are aligned with their own.
History graduate students are active in over twenty workshops, which are sponsored by the Council on Advanced Studies Workshops. Each year, the CAS provides a list of all active workshops on campus, contact information for each workshop's leadership, and links to relevant webpages. Therefore, if you are interested in participating in one or more workshops, we recommend you contact the workshop coordinator or faculty advisor and visit the workshops' webpages for more information.
African Studies
Ancient Societies
Early Modern and Mediterranean Worlds (1200-1800)
East Asia: Trans-Regional Histories
Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-century Atlantic Cultures
Environmental Studies
Gender and Sexuality Studies
History and Theory of Capitalism
History, Philosophy, and Sociology of Science
Interdisciplinary Approaches to Modern France
Jewish Studies
Latin American and the Caribbean
Latin American History
Medicine and Its Objects
Medieval Studies
Politics, History, and Society
Renaissance
Transnational Approaches to Modern Europe
US History & Culture